1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of providing printed information in multi-readable form, such as in both human-readable and machine-readable form.
2. Description of the Background Art
Information in the form of machine-readable such as bar codes, is increasingly being used to facilitate the handling of a wide range of articles. This expanding use of machine-readable codes continues to escalate with the increased use of automatic equipment in handling of articles.
During the handling and distribution of product containing cartons or cases, Frito-Lay, Inc., the assignee of the present invention, utilizes product case labels having bar coded information concerning the contents of the product cases. However, since human loaders, warehousemen, route salesmen and the like continue to handle these cases, it is desirable that the case labels contain both human readable and machine-readable data.
Labels containing both human-readable and machine readable data are known in the art, see, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,661,001 for Label Printer With Test Pattern for Price and Bar Codes and 4,659,416 for Terminal Bar Code Printer for Label Applicator. However, the labels disclosed in these patents print the human-readable and machine-readable data on two separate areas of the same label. Other publications that disclose human-readable and machine-readable information printed on separate areas of a surface are U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,247,907 for Method and Apparatus for Typing Characters and Optically Readable Binary Representations Thereof on Same Page and 4,079,482 for Electronic Data Processing of Chinese Characters, Japanese Patent Publication No. 60-206679 for Printer for Bar Code Label With Article Name, and IBM Technical Disclosure 209-111.5 entitled Simultaneous Typing and Magnetic Printing by Green and Fisher.
When printing human-readable and machine-readable information onto separate areas of the same label, the requirement for label surface area is increased, and consequently the label expense is increased without any increase in readability of either the human-readable or the machine-readable information. There thus remains a need in the art for improvements in labels and the like that contain both human-readable and machine-readable information.